A cooked sausage product such as vienna sausage is normally packaged in metal or glass containers and the fact that such products are normally packaged in such rigid containers presents problems which are not present in such packages as flexible plastic packaging and plastic trays. In preparing a cooked sausage product such as vienna sausage, a meat emulsion is prepared and stuffed into cellulose casings ranging from 100 to 160 feet in length. The stuffed casing is then passed into a linking machine where the stuffed casing is linked by a twisting operation into suitable lengths and for vienna sausage this is normally about 28-30 inches. Following linking, the stuffed casing goes through a cooking operation to coagulate the emulsion and produce a firm product that can eventually be separated from the casing. The product is normally chilled to facilitate peeling of the casing and further handling. After the peeling operation, the individual sausage lengths are now ready to be cut to appropriate lengths and inserted into metal or glass containers. Equipment is presently available which will cut the vienna sausage to appropriate lengths (i.e. about 21/4 inches) and for placing groups of such cut sausages into containers and is available from Marlen Research Corporation. In its operation the lengths of sausage which have been removed from the casings are placed by operators into a series of metal cups which are open at the top and which are mounted to a conveyor chain. For lengths of sausage of about 281/2 inches, approximately 12 of these metal cups are mounted side by side on the conveyor chain and the long lengths of sausage are placed into the cups through an opening in the top. Each operator usually places one or two long lengths of sausage in the cups as the conveyor travels by. Normally about seven such lengths are placed into the cups. The cups are mounted on a conveyor chain in tandem with the axis of the cups on the longitudinal axis of the machine. In addition, each cup is so mounted that it can rotate 90 degrees. The conveyor chain carries the sausages in the cups to a helical knife which cuts the sausages at 90 degrees to the longitudinal axis to the appropriate length--usually about 21/4 inches. After the cutting operation each individual cup is rotated 90 degrees and the individual cups pass to a star wheel that holds a series of empty cans. The cups are brought into registry with the individual empty cans and a cam-operated push rod then transfers the group of seven sausages from the cup to the can and immediately withdraws. Thereafter the filled can is conveyed away for inspection, sealing of the can and usually a final sterilizing operation.
Although equipment as described will continuously produce from 200 to 450 cans of product per minute depending on production requirements and the number of operators, there are several problems attendant with its use. First of all, the aligning and placement of the longer sausage lengths into the cups is done by hand and unless these links of sausage are properly aligned in the cups, it is possible that the end cups may ultimately have sausages which are too short, resulting in short weight in the product in the can. In addition, because these sausages are relatively long, i.e. about 28 to 30 inches, they are susceptible to breakage, especially when one considers that these lengths are hand carried from the peeling machine to the cutting and canning equipment. In addition, individual cups are of a fixed diameter and are somewhat difficult to load. Furthermore, experience with this type of equipment indicates that the hand loading of the cups is tedious work and it is often difficult to maintain efficiency because of fatigue of the operators.